The Georgia
Secretary of State’s office said a formal announcement won’t be possible until
the results are certified next week and that Fulton County still hasn’t
finished processing votes.

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Out of 3.7
million votes cast and with 96 percent of precincts reporting, the official
count has Chambliss at 49.9 percent and Democratic challenger Jim Martin at
46.7 percent. A vote tally below 50 percent triggers an automatic runoff,
according to state law.

The focus now
shifts to tens of thousands of outstanding ballots from absentee, military and
overseas voters. Those are still coming in, and both campaigns on Wednesday
predicted they will win the bulk of them.

During conference
calls with reporters, Chambliss and Martin both said a runoff was all but
certain.

“It was a pretty
topsy-turvy night, but we’re pretty excited about where we wound up,” Chambliss
said. “We are in full-fledged runoff mode and moving in the direction of making
sure we get folks to turn out on Dec. 2. This will obviously draw importance around
the country. We know there will be a lot of attention focused on us.”

Martin said he
has reached out to Obama and “would be delighted” to have his help.

“Dec. 2 is going
to be about helping President Barack Obama get our economy back on track,”
Martin said. “This is not ‘Landslide Jim,’ but we’re going to win this thing.”

Martin also
reminded reporters that he has already won one runoff this year. It was Aug. 5
in the Democratic primary against Dekalb County CEO Vernon Jones.

A Vietnam veteran
and former state representative, Martin was helped by the Obama campaign, which
registered hundreds of thousands of new African-American voters in the Peach
State. That quickly thinned Chambliss’s once-mighty polling leads to within
most polls’ margins of error.

Tuesday night’s
results followed the same pattern: Chambliss built a strong, early lead, at one
point topping Martin by a 55-41 percent total with 82 percent of precincts
reporting.

Martin said he
expects to continue to benefit from Obama’s coattails and likely won’t change
his strategy of reaching out to African-American voters.

Chambliss also
said he won’t change his campaign strategy other than to seek help from
prominent Republican figures such as former presidential candidates Mitt
Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani or McCain and Palin.

Chambliss said he
has already offered his congratulations to Obama, but won’t be surprised to see
him campaigning for Martin. He said once voters clear away the “distraction” of
the presidential race, they will vote Republican.

“We fully expect
Sen. Obama will be here campaigning for Jim,” Chambliss said. “We will also
bring in surrogates … There is a good chance that John (McCain) will be here.”